


Creamsicle

by dancing_lawn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, background hansy, daphne's just really horny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 18:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancing_lawn/pseuds/dancing_lawn
Summary: When Cormac and her had first kissed, back at that frat party, he had been the one to lean down and leave a little bite below her ear. It had been hot in that room, but she had shivered regardless.Now, here, in the ice cream aisle of the town’s sole grocery store, she was curious to see what Ronald Weasley would look like, shivering and melting, at the same time.





	Creamsicle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [provocative_envy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/gifts).

> so, 
> 
> i have a _thing_ for rare-pairs, all courtesy of @provocative-envy (who deserves all of the love and appreciation and awards and ice-cream in the world)
> 
> so I wrote this mess but i love it and i hope you all enjoy it too!

Cormac McLaggen was her first love. 

They had met at a fraternity party, her first weekend of freshman year. He was a year above and was manning the keg in the Sig Ep basement, when Daphne had stuck out her plastic cup to be filled. He promptly abandoned the keg to a freshman, to grab her hand and pull her onto the dance floor. 

“You’re beautiful,” he said into her ear, hands placed firmly on her waist. 

“Oh, thank you,” Daphne replied, feigning a blush. 

The next morning, she was trying to clasp her bra when Cormac stumbled back into his room, holding two plates of pancakes and a plastic bottle of Aunt Jemima’s wedged under his arm. 

“You’re leaving?” he asked, crestfallen. Even as a sophomore, he still got excited about romance, and girls, and tenderness. That was one of the things Daphne liked about him. 

She had told Pansy she would meet her for coffee in the dining hall. But the pancakes looked so fluffy, and she felt a twinge of almost-regret looking at Cormac’s slumped shoulders: as if her future self was preemptively guilty. 

“I can spare a pancake,” she said, biting her lip to keep from smiling. 

It was her first real relationship: one with more than just holding hands and absentminded kissing and more-than-occasional sex. He vented to her about his thoughts and looked up at her with these wide puppy dog eyes as if she was the only one who could protect him. 

And, she liked how Pansy’d tease him, and how she’d hear his fraternity brothers hyping him up on the other side of the phone call, and how he always left sticky maple syrup kisses on her nose. It wasn’t so much that she could stop pretending around him. Rather, she felt like the girl she was supposed to be around him: sweet and gentle and loving and soft. Her ragged edges were forgotten. 

Which is _why_ it came as a shock when he broke up with her. It was two months before graduation and they had already rented an apartment in New York together: a cute, two-bedroom in Greenwich Village with wooden floors and large windows and a balcony, where she imagined plants would overhang. 

“We always knew this was a possibility. And Daph, you know this is my dream. I mean, fuck, playing for the Seahawks?” He leaned against the island countertop on his forearms, so that Daphne towered over him. 

“But the lease was signed. And we could do long-distance! Maybe you can transfer over in a couple years,” Daphne argued. It’s not like he’d be tied to Seattle for the rest of his life. Players changed teams all the time. 

“Daph, please don’t ask me to stay behind.” He sighed, shoulders slumping. 

“I’m not asking you to stay behind, I’m asking you to consider long-distance.”

Cormac winced, looked down at his hands, then looked back up at her, eyebrows raised. 

“Oh. _Oh._” Daphne had never imagined that she would be the dead-weight. She was meant to be light and easy and gentle and soft: but here she was, the proverbial ball to his proverbial chain. 

He came up to her, then, wrapping his arms around her and resting his cheek against her forehead. 

“Who knows? Maybe we’ll bump into each other in the street a few years from now and realize that we needed the space to figure ourselves out.” 

Now, rather than living her dream life in New York with a gorgeous boyfriend, she was back at home in California, aimlessly going from day to day. 

She was at the gas station, filling up her car, when she bumped into her past. 

“Daphne Greengrass?” 

It was Ronald Weasley. His dad owned the auto-shop, to which the gas station was connected. Unlike in elementary and middle school, when his limbs were gangly and too long for his upper body, he had now filled out, to where he stood over her with impressive confidence and solidity. His jeans and white t-shirt—which painted a pretty picture of his shoulders—were stained with patches of dark grease, and he was wiping his hands on a wash cloth, although his fingers remained grey. 

“The one and the same.” Daphne didn’t know what to say really; the two were never close, and him and his friend group—who were all made up of townspeople that operated local businesses—never meshed well with her and her friends, whose parents worked as lawyers and venture capitalists and managers of tech companies. 

Clearly, he thought the same, as he smiled—or grimaced, if one was more accurate. “I haven’t seen you since what? High school graduation?” 

She reddened, remembering the steely showdown between Ron’s and Draco’s dads. 

“Yea, four years now.” 

He nodded in agreement, although it was pretty basic math. Another silence. The odd thing about adulthood is that petty school yard disagreements seemed irrelevant—and yet, even more powerful. 

He scratched his arm, where the cuff of his t-shirt—_tight, so incredibly tight_—rubbed into his skin. He opened his mouth to say something, but the gas pump clicked, loudly into the silence, indicating that her gas had been refilled. 

“I guess I’ll see you around,” he said, waving the once. 

She crossed her arms and rocked back on her heels. “See ya.”

He turned and headed back into the garage. Daphne could see a girl—ginger and in cutoffs, clearly his younger sister—eyeing them as she tightened the cap on her water bottle. 

Three weeks later, Pansy returned from her trip in the south of Spain—a graduation gift from her father—and plopped herself squarely back into Daphne’s newly suburban life. 

Unlike Daphne, she had not made plans to move to New York, although if Daphne had asked her, she probably would have booked a flight immediately. Instead, she argued that she needed time to “fuck around, get back her tan, live her youth” before real adulthood: which, for Pansy, was at age 26, when she’d be cut off from her parent’s insurance. 

On Tuesday, after Daphne got back from work, Pansy was already flipping through magazines in Daphne’s bedroom, dog-earing pages she was interested in but would never read. 

“You’d look hot in a corduroy skirt,” Pansy said, pointing to a model in the magazine who wore a burnt orange skirt and a floppy brown hat. 

Daphne rolled her eyes, pulling down her slacks and falling into bed beside Pansy in just her underwear. 

“I’m serious! You’d look like a cowgirl.”

“Why would I want to look like a cowgirl?”

“First off, cowgirls are hot. Secondly, save a horse, ride a cowgirl,” Pansy said, matter of factly. 

“What?” Daphne laughed. “That makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense! Come on, I have a pair of boots my dad bought me from his business trip in Austin.”

Their mini fashion show turned into an actual outing to the local bar off the side of the highway. It was pretty gross; rather than looking like a cute, dingy bar with mismatched stools and charming neon lights and dark wooden counter tops that gleamed, the whole place just looked abandoned and dusty and dark. But, it was the only place they had the energy to go to, given it was only a five minute drive from Daphne’s, and the bartender gave them huge frothy pints of beer, which they sipped at over a dish of peanuts that were god-only-knows how old. 

The opening chords of “Sweet Home Alabama” kicked in through the tinny speakers hung in the corner above them when the door beside them swung open, letting in a group of twenty-something men. 

They all headed to the same table, positioned across the bar from them—clearly their regular watering hole that they frequented after work. One of them called out, saying he’d grab the first round, and turned around to face the two girls. 

“_Potter?_” Pansy exclaimed, although it was so high pitched and shocked it seemed to hit frequencies too high for Daphne to hear. 

Harry Potter frowned, clenching his jaw and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his ratty jean jacket, which Daphne recognized from high school. “Parkinson. I thought you were in Seattle.”

Pansy raised a brow. “Aw, keeping up with my whereabouts?”

“Only to know where to avoid you,” he responded cooly. 

Pansy didn’t say anything, but her grip tightened on her pint. 

Potter coughed. “Parkinson. Greengrass. Always a displeasure.” He nodded, then headed to the bar, where the bartender had already set out five bottles of cheap swill on a tray.

Daphne took a sip of her cider. “We could leave.”

“And give him the satisfaction? No, thank you, we have every right to be here as they do.” 

Pansy gulped the rest of her beer down, leaving only a thick film of foam at the bottom. 

Staying there until they left was easier said than done. It was nearing midnight, and the men were still cheery and raucous, while Pansy glowered. 

“Do you want anything?” Daphne asked, peeling herself off of the sticky leather seat. 

“Martini. But only if the vodka is over forty dollars. Two olives.” Pansy kept her gaze locked on Daphne, although she could tell that she wanted to turn and stare at the other table. 

The bar was sticky from the other patrons, but the bartender seemed focused on wiping a glass of non-existent smudges. His name tag read Hagrid, in big blocky letters, as if a child had written them out—or, as if the pencil was too small to fit properly in his hands. 

“Two martinis please. How nice is the vodka though?” Daphne asked. 

He grinned through his thick beard. “Only the best for you.” Daphne didn’t know what that meant, especially because he grabbed a nondescript bottle of clear liquid that lacked any sort of labeling that would have tipped her off as to the quality. But, what Pansy didn’t know wouldn’t kill her...she hoped. 

He busied himself with making the drinks, taking twice as long as normal—which Daphne appreciated, as the glasses seemed as if they would snap in his grasp. 

“Hullo,” someone said from behind her. 

Daphne turned and met the eyes—so blue, like the ocean off Highway One—of Ron Weasley. 

“Ronald,” she replied. 

He winced, scrunching up his nose—brown and extra freckled from the sun. He had clearly changed out of his work uniform, as he was now in a clean—albeit wrinkled—white t-shirt. 

“You sound like my mom,” he said. 

She blushed. Pansy often complained that Daphne sounded perpetually disappointed. In a way, she supposed she was. The rest of the world never seemed to measure up to what everyone else said it was meant to be like. 

“How was work?” Daphne asked. Hagrid was trying to grab the last two olives rolling around at the bottom of the jar, to no avail. 

He ran his hands through his hair. It was shorter than it used to be, in high school. She recalled watching soccer games, of boys she used to date, and his hair would flop messily as he guarded the goal. 

“’s fine. Lockhart’s paint got chipped, and it’s a fucking hassle trying to find the exact shade of purple online. Apparently, violet is too severe.”

Dr. Lockhart was the civics teacher at their old school and one of the most hated people in town. He drove a bright purple convertible, with cream leather seats that he encouraged the senior girls to sit in, and insisted on being called Dr., even though his PhD in psychology was from one of those non-accredited online schools. 

“It’s meant to be mauve. He gets it specially ordered from Turkey,” she said, biting back a laugh although it came out sounded like a snort. 

Ron’s eyes widened and he smiled. “Of-_fucking_-course he does.”

“Yea, he’s really upset, especially after Syria. Didn’t you see the editorial he published in the paper, about his life-changing pilgrimage to Turkey and how he discovered tzatziki?”

“Nah, the Prophet’s trash, we use ‘em all as bedding for Ginny’s hamster.”

“Poor hamster.”

“Arnold’s the true hero of the family.”

“Making the sacrifices nobody else will.”

“Mayor should give him a medal for services done to the town.”

Hagrid placed down the two martinis. “’Ere you go. Anything else?” 

Daphne shook her head no and grabbed the glasses. She didn’t know what to say, with the sudden interruption. 

Ron leaned against the bar. “I’ll pass along your condolences to Arnold.”

She smiled. “Thanks.” 

She began to walk back to the table, when Ron called out again. “D’you like to meet him?”

“Meet who?” Daphne asked, turning around. Ron was red now, clearly not expecting his own proposal. 

He looked down at his feet—scuffed brown boots—then back up at Daphne. “Arnold?”

“Is that a question, or?” 

“No, I mean, yes, do you want to meet him?”

It was quite possibly the strangest question she’d been asked. Which, was why it surprised her more—and Ron, too, clearly—when she said, “Sure.”

Twenty minutes later, Daphne was sitting at the back of Harry’s truck, Pansy beside her, while Harry and Ron sat at the front. A Jason DeRulo song played on the radio: the only sound in the quiet truck. 

Pansy and Harry had bristled upon being told where their friends planned to go, but they both joined: Harry as he was the designated driver, and Pansy because she wanted to annoy Harry. Clearly, it was doing the trick, because every other second, he’d glance up into his rearview mirror and clench his fists tighter into the steering wheel. 

In front of her, Ron sat perfectly still, staring straight ahead. Daphne would have thought his posture casual, if not for his bright red neck and his fidgeting hands. She was nervous, herself. She had no clue what possessed her to say yes to look at a hamster—boredom? Curiosity? Instinct? Rather than dwelling on an inner monologue, she counted the freckles on the back of Ron’s neck, willing herself to calm down, as if she was counting sheep. 

She had gotten up to 73 when they pulled up into the driveway of a two-story house. While the façade itself looked perfectly normal, matching the other houses in the cul-de-sac, the...accessories were wild and mismatched. Clusters of brightly colored flowers and plants hung down from the porch, which housed seemingly dozens of chairs and sofas. Baby toys cluttered the lawn, and several large cars sat in the driveway and along the road, all a variety of dusty shades of red, orange, and blue. It painted a stark contrast to Daphne’s house, with no lawn—only tasteful stones and cacti—and a glass front, which looked into a white, expensive living room. 

“Sorry it’s a mess, Bill and Fleur are staying while they get settled with Victoire,” Ron said while opening the front door—unlocked, not from a lack of care of safety but because what was neighborly about stealing from the Weasleys?

Pansy headed straight to the kitchen, opening cabinets until she found the liquor, with Harry on her heels. 

Ron led Daphne deeper into the house. She felt as if she was entering a lion’s den, and the cats were hiding, watching them before pouncing. Framed photos of birthdays, graduations, and weddings framed the wall: a sign of possessiveness with which Daphne was unfamiliar. Nobody around her had ever wanted her—viscerally, instinctually, lovingly. She was taken and liked out of convenience, because she was the only one around, rather than any genuine affection. The house was stifling, cloying with its sweetness. 

Ginny’s room was the second door on the left, and it seemed as if the younger girl had never thrown anything away. Ron didn’t seem bothered though, heading to her desk where a pink cage sat. 

“Arnold, meet Greengrass. Greengrass, Arnold.” 

The hamster looked up at Daphne quizzically and blinked once, twice. It flicked its tongue out then turned its back to lick at the water spout. 

“Lemme see if you can hold him.” He opened the cage and stuck his hand in, then pulled out a ball of orange fur. Clearly, the Weasleys preferred the company of other redheads. 

Daphne pet the hamster with the back of a finger. Arnold wriggled to get out of Ron’s grasp, but he didn’t succeed. 

“Where’s your sister?” Daphne asked. It was strange, sitting in a stranger’s room in the middle of the night. 

“She goes out with her friends after lacrosse practice. Probably down at the lake now,” Ron responded, face scrunching up in faux-nausea. 

Daphne remembered her own escapades at the lake and blushed. The water was unsafe to swim in—it was a man-made lake, so there was fear of mercury poisoning—but the thick clusters of oak trees and the trails that spread out, like spokes on a wheel, provided fun enough. 

“Does she have a boyfriend?” 

“Several.” He continued to look uncomfortable. 

She kneeled down to sit on the rug. It was blue, and coiled inwards, the color going from white to a deep navy. Ron joined her, placing Arnold in his lap so he wouldn’t squirm under the bed. 

“That’s very...modern of her.” Ginny had always scared Daphne, even though she was several years younger than her. 

“Too modern,” Ron said. 

“It’s not like you were celibate in high school,” Daphne pointed out, raising a brow. 

“_That_ was different, it was only one girl.”

“Lavender’d disagree.” Lavender Brown had also scared Daphne. 

Ron reddened. “Hermione was—it was nothing.”

“Ginny’s not in love with anyone. It’s easier.”

“Is it?” Now it was Ron’s turn at playing Spanish Inquisition. 

She didn’t look at his eyes, knew that the clear, unadulterated, simple blue would frighten her. 

“I’m not a slut.”

“I wasn’t calling you one.”

Sure enough, there they were: so stark and harshly blue that she felt as if she was laid out naked. The honesty, the lack of any pretense, was novel. 

Daphne meant to say something—_what_ she didn’t know—but the door burst open, revealing a dazed Harry and a disconcerted Pansy. 

“Ron, let’s go, I’ve got to pick up the guys and drive them home,” Harry said. He didn’t look over at Pansy. 

Ron’s brows furrowed, as his eyes darted from Harry to Pansy and back again. “Do you need a ride home?” 

Harry opened his mouth, but Pansy interrupted. “No, no, don’t want to get car-sick, Potter’s driving is abysmal, we’ll walk.”

The next day, Daphne was at the grocery store, pretending to nurse a hang-over when in actuality she was only nursing the embarrassment of emotional nudity. As with any hangover, more alcohol—or, in her case, more vulnerability—would only worsen the pain. Unfortunately, fortune was not in her favor. 

“Ronald,” she said, spotting him in the ice cream aisle. She was wearing a thin tank top and no bra, so that her nipples hardened along with her goosebumps in the cold. 

He noticed. “Greengrass.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, but she guessed it only made it worse, as it dragged her top slightly lower. Ron’s Adam’s apple bobbed. 

Opening up the freezer, she grabbed a tub of rocky road, then closed it. 

“I’ve always pegged you for vanilla,” Ron said. 

Was that an insult? “I’m offended.”

He blushed. Daphne thought that he did a lot of blushing around her. “Not--not in that way. You’re not boring. Vanilla’s very exciting. Delicious. I love vanilla.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to go on. An upside of Ron’s rambling was the unintended honesty: the little truths peppered in, as if he had no filter. 

“It’s just—vanilla's a classic flavor, and you’re, like, super classic, you know, like umm, the opposite of trendy, but not in that way, _fuck_, I mean, you’re like jeans or I don’t know, that girl from the Tiffany’s movie, you know, everyone likes you.” He said all of this with his gaze moving from her, to the freezers, to the ceiling, to the boxes of popsicles in his hands. 

“I’m like jeans?”

“No, well kind of, you’re just sleek and clean and people always look good in jeans—_fuck, I know that sounds like a euphemism, but it’s not, I promise_, people are not inside of you, like, obviously not right now, you’re not a _prude_ or anything, which there isn’t anything wrong with, your sex life is very private, not that I think about it or anything, your virginity or lack thereof is totally between you and whoever you’re dating.”

“I’m not dating anyone,” she said. 

“You’re not?”

“No, I’m not,” she said, again, only this time stepping closer to him so that she was looking up at his face. She was close enough to see the stubble and the two moles on the underside of his jaw. 

“Oh.” 

When Cormac and her had first kissed, back at that frat party, he had been the one to lean down and leave a little bite below her ear. It had been hot in that room, but she had shivered regardless. 

Now, here, in the ice cream aisle of the town’s sole grocery store, she was curious to see what Ronald Weasley would look like, shivering and melting, at the same time. 

Ron didn’t say anything, just stared at her with those deep, impossibly clear eyes. It should be illegal, to look at her that way in public, and it only made her goosebumps worse. 

She leaned up on her toes, not breaking her gaze, looking up at him from beneath her blonde lashes. Her bags were dark and eyes hollow, and if this had been a normal day, maybe Daphne would have turned around and gone straight to the self-service check out. But, here she was, completely bare, for Ronald Weasley of all people. 

At the last moment, she brushed her lips over his jaw, kissing it softly. She looked back up again and saw that his eyes had fluttered shut, while his grip on the ice cream boxes grew lax, so they fell to the floor. 

His stubble was itchy against her cheek, but the friction was nice and welcome: reminding her that this was very much real. 

She moved to kiss the other side, placing her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. He wrapped his arms around her waist, hard and yet so, _so_ soft, as they pressed into her skin through her top. He lifted her up, just a bit. In his arms, teetering on falling, she felt as if she was about to break, like the martini glasses last night. She was curious what it would feel like to crack and fall apart. 

Daphne stopped kissing his jaw and looked at him. It was simultaneously both relieving to see his eyes closed and empty. But, his brows were furrowed and he breathed heavy, as if denied from a drug. She had never felt this powerful before. 

She kissed him, finally, and her heart was torn open. He moaned deep in his chest and returned the kiss with more ferocity than she could muster. He pulled at her bottom lip, all teeth and tongue, and dropped her to her feet so that he could cradle her cheek. Towering over her, he seemed to envelop her in the kiss, and for the first time in her life she felt owned, like she could disappear into his being, make it her home, and never leave. 

None of his insecurity seeped into the kiss. Where a minute before, he oozed nerves, now he was all confidence and strength. He _wanted_ her and, perhaps most importantly, wanted her to know. 

She pressed a palm to his lower stomach, while he slid his other hand into her back jean pocket and squeezed lightly—_teasingly_. They broke apart briefly, only for him to begin leaving little kisses along her neck, then _suck_. Her mind went blank and her knees buckled. 

“Would the couple in Aisle 12 please remove themselves from the premises?” the PA system crackled and popped overhead, breaking Daphne’s extreme concentration. 

Ron, finally, let her go, but kept a hand on her waist. With his mouth swollen and eyes glassy, he looked NC-17. 

“Sorry, I got a bit carried away,” she said, sheepishly. 

He smiled, all teeth. “That’s alright.” Then, he leaned down to grab the boxes of popsicles he had dropped onto the ground and began to walk down the aisle. 

“Where are you going?” Daphne called out. 

He turned around. “Home. I know a way we can cool off,” he said, grinning wide.


End file.
